


there's comfort at the bottom of a swimming pool

by sparxwrites



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Angst, Blood, Blood Magic, Delusions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mild Gore, Threats of Violence, unhealthy eating habits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-11 04:29:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4421384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I want to crawl inside you,” says Parvis, and his voice shakes, trembles like his hand is where he’s got the tip of a knife pressed against Will’s waistcoat, just under his breastbone. “God, I want to-” He breaks off, draws in a breath, licks at his lips with a tongue that darts out from behind the safety of his teeth and then back again. “Just, fucking-” He grits his teeth, struggles with the words. “Right behind your ribs, hollow you out, it’d be safe there, right? I’d be safe?”</p>
<p>(The blood altar breaks Parvis, and Will is the only one there to pick up the pieces.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	there's comfort at the bottom of a swimming pool

**Author's Note:**

> it's been a long week.
> 
> (title drawn from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRmaIYbLWho).

“I want to crawl inside you,” says Parvis, and his voice shakes, trembles like his hand is where he’s got the tip of a knife pressed against Will’s waistcoat, just under his breastbone. “God, I want to-” He breaks off, draws in a breath, licks at his lips with a tongue that darts out from behind the safety of his teeth and then back again. “Just, fucking-” He grits his teeth, struggles with the words. “Right behind your ribs, _hollow you out_ , it’d be safe there, right? I’d be safe?”

Will sighs, quietly. “You can’t, Parvis,” he murmurs, voice low and rasp-rough from the lack of the sleep and the coffee and the drugs, fingers curled white-knuckled and too-tight around the lip of the blood altar that Parv had backed him up against. “We’ve been through this.”

They _had_ been through this; once, twice, a hundred times. Will had lost count somewhere along the way, some time after the violent energy that had always been coiled in Parvis like a compressed spring had tilted sideways into instability – after the blood altar had begun eating away at him, piece by piece, but before the fits of mania and delusions had become a weekly occurrence, then a daily one. Before he’d had to move in once Parv stopped eating, stopped sleeping, almost stopped everything but _breathing_.

“Put the knife down, Parvis,” he murmurs, tiredly. It’s hard to find fear when he’s been up for three days straight, blood diluted with the caffeine that hardly seems to affect him any more. The respawn still aches like ice in his throat, like cold metal pressed against his back teeth, a flash-freeze headache that will linger until he finally, _finally_ finds time to sleep. “Just… put it down.”

The noise Parvis makes isn’t even human, something between a sob and a death rattle as he presses his face against Will’s neck, tear-wet and open-mouthed. “Fuck, fuck-” he gasps, tugging the arm he’s got around Will’s waist tighter, _tighter_ , until they’re pressed together from thigh to stomach to shoulder, the knife crushed between them.

It’s already torn a hole in Will’s waistcoat, no doubt – he can feel the blade far too keenly against his skin for it to be through two layers of fabric – and probably through his shirt, and he sincerely hopes it’s not about to tear a hole through him. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Please,” sobs Parvis, the word more anger and pain than any true sorrow. “Please, you have to- _shit_ , you _have to_ -” The knife presses harder, his hand trembles harder, scores a line of pain across the empty space between Will’s lower ribs. “I _need_ this, you don’t understand, I just need to- just _this_ , and then everything will be okay-”

“Put the knife down, Parvis,” repeats Will, slowly, gently. He uncurls one hand from the blood altar, movements as steady and gradual as if he were handling a spooked animal. “Put it down.” It’s difficult to slip a hand between them, when they’re pressed close enough it’s hard to know where the join is, where the stark, sharp jut of Parvis’ ribs moulds to the softness and muscle of Will’s chest and stomach.

Parvis sobs again, quieter this time, less death in the sound. “No,” he says, though he flinches when Will’s hand brushes his, fingers loosening a little. “No, you don’t understand.” He presses his open mouth against Will’s pulse point, though the dampness of it is hardly noticeable after the tears that are still trickling down Will’s neck, soaking into his collar. “You’re so warm…”

“Give me the knife, Parv,” sighs Will, letting go of the altar with his other hand to cradle the back of Parvis’ head in his palm, winding fingers into dark, overlong hair. “Just. Give it here, c’mon. That’s it, shh, shh…”

He closes his fingers around the hilt of the blade, just a little higher than the point that Parvis’ hand wraps around it, and tugs. For a moment, Parvis trembles harder, _pushes_ harder, and Will grunts at the sharp flash of pain as the cut on his stomach deepens – and then Parvis lets go with a gasp, the choked inhale of a dying man, and Strife wrenches it out from between them and tosses it off somewhere to the side.

“There we go,” he says, tired and hollow and lost as Parvis’ legs buckle and drag them both down to the floor, slumped against the blood altar and tangled against the unpleasantly warm stone of the runes of sacrifice that encircle it. “There we go. That’s better, isn’t it?” He bites his tongue after the words fall out, hating the empty platitudes he’s been reduced to, how useless they feel when Parvis is pressed against him and trembling, eyes unfocused.

Parvis just shudders in response, curling into the solidity of Will’s chest, palms braced against the curve of his ribs under the ruined waistcoat, the fat, the muscle that coats them, hiding the white of his bones from view. It’s not better, not at all. Nothing ever seems to make it better, not even on the days he doesn’t let go, the days he hollows Will out and maps the empty space of his ribcage and feels something other than biting cold for just a few, precious seconds.

“You’re so warm,” he mumbles, hopeless, fingers curling into the fabric of the waistcoat as if he can tear his way down to Will’s ribcage with his own bare hands, with ragged nails and shaking fingers and forearms thin enough they fit inside the circle of his fingers. Blood pumps through his veins, keeps him alive, but it’s stolen – cold and congealed inside the altar, sluggish, enough to preserve life but not enough to _imitate_ it. “How do you do it? You’re- you’re so- Fuck. I need it, Will, I just need- _this,_ it’s all-”

He presses closer, as if Will’s proximity alone will be enough to bring heat back to the ice that coats his bones, as if he can _get_ any closer with the two of them already bound together tight enough they might as well be one.

Will’s heart beats against him, against his chest, separated from only by a few thin layers of fabric and some flesh. It takes up space in Will’s ribcage, space Parvis wants, space Parvis _needs_ , and he swallows down a noise of pain at the thought of the warmth of it, the security, the _safety_. “You’re so warm.”

“Shh,” murmurs Will again, palm broad and too-hot against the back of Parvis’ skull, cradling him close. His chest aches, despite the lack of a knife through it – this time, at least – and it’s almost enough to steal his breath away. Almost enough to make him wish Parv hadn’t let go of the knife. “Shh, shh. It’s okay,” he says, the lie of it coming so easily by now that he’s half-convinced himself he’s telling the truth. “Shh. You’re okay.”

 


End file.
